Ask for help from a real estate expert or a company that manages properties to spot great deals.Good luck!

It doesn't take long to learn how to spot a good deal.6.

But, even that area has some spots that are not so great.

If not, and although I'm not a fan of this, can someone spot you a couple grand for a few months so you can get it down?

Or you can be in between the 2, and get a 5% ROI in a decent area (Numbers are not exact, just examples)I hear many people say they are doing it for "long term wealth", but will end up turning down an opportunity that will be much better off in 5 years, opposed to another property that looks great now, but in 5 years will be in the same spot it was before. 

Pick your path (renting out properties, fixing and selling) and look for good spots.

@Julie Hill Hi Julie, The Coachella Valley is a great spot for STR’s!!!

I'm generally in solid C/C+ areas... ones I can see transitioning to B areas in the coming 3-5 years based on my market knowledge and proximity to developments or revitalization efforts.It's the best spot to be in Detroit IMO.

Zillow's API is no longer offered (or they make it extremely hard to access these days - have had no luck finding an updated link/page for it), Redfin has broad-stroke CSVs you can download that only give 5-10 fields of info and not often at the metro area, you can't legally create a tool to crawl these websites...I'm looking for 1 (or a handful of sources) to pull together basic metrics at the metro/city level for US real estate.

@Melanie P. is spot on, brother.